Saturday, September 22, 2012

People who come to the UK notice that the police aren't armed--it's one of the most obvious things about British Culture. Unlike the US, where the society is on a war footing and lunatics can seriously tool up to kill masses of people with the blessing of the gun lobby and other idiots.

Anyway, British Police don't carry guns. The situation in Great Britain is unique for a heavily urbanised country of its population size. There are always those who question why Britain is out of step with most of the rest of the world, with the exceptions of the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and a handful of other nations.

Not that some people in the UK wouldn't like to see armed police, especially since two police officers, Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone, were slain this past week. On the other hand, there are other considerations that just officers being shot. UK Gun crime is fairly low and incidents where officers are shot are extremely rare.

These considerations included:
• risk of police having weapons taken from them
• risk of greater use of weapons against the public and/or offenders
• and ambush can never be controlled, whether or not officers are armed

New Zealand has an armed officer similar to Britain, but it also has more sheep than people.

Another thing, officers, chief constables and politicians alike are wary of
upsetting an equilibrium that has been maintained throughout Britain's
183-year policing history. There's a general recognition that if the police are walking
around with guns it changes things," says Richard Garside, director of
the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies.

Opponents say that arming the Police force would undermine the principle of policing by consent - the notion that the force owes its primary duty to the public, rather than to the state, as in other countries. This concept owes much to the historical foundations of British criminal justice, says Peter Waddington, professor of social policy at the University of Wolverhampton.

"A great deal of what we take as normal about policing was set out in the early 19th Century," he says.
"When Robert Peel formed the Metropolitan Police there was a very strong fear of the military - the masses feared the new force would be oppressive."
A force that did not routinely carry firearms - and wore blue rather than red, which was associated with the infantry - was part of this effort to distinguish the early "Peelers" from the Army, Waddington says.

One police officer serving in Southern England said:

"I have been in the police for 12 years, before that I was in the
Army. I would happily carry a gun if the decision was made but it won't
ever happen.
"I don't think practically it could work because of the
training. Officers in this country are highly trained and this would
extend to firearms training, too. But, at the moment, with all the cuts,
we can't put enough officers in the cars, let alone give them firearms
training.
"Also, the police in this country are always under so much
scrutiny. Look at the issue of Tasers, the civil liberty groups think
they are one of the most inhumane things going.
"I was previously injured badly in an assault. My colleague
and I feared for our lives - thankfully other officers came to our aid. I
don't think a gun - or a Taser for that matter - would have helped us
in that situation. Communication is one of the best tools, and to be
honest, having a gun could make an officer feel over-confident."

"Our citizens are armed - even the bad ones. The criminal element
here is better armed than the police departments most of the times, due
to budget constraints.
"It would be impossible for us to do our job if we weren't
armed. I'd have to quit. I worked narcotics for 20 years and definitely
in that field, how would you do that job without being armed? Even as a
patrolman, you're reactive. The other guy knows what he's going to do.
It definitely has to be armed when you have to be reactive.
"The public expects us to be armed - when they call in the
cavalry that's exactly what they want. The general public, because of
television, they believe that we're a lot better armed than we really
are. You respond to a call and they say 'Where's your machine gun?'"

The United States is a war zone, which isn't going to change anytime soon: no matter how high the body count.

On the other hand, other parts of the world are quite happy to live in peace, under the rule of law, and aren't too willing to change anytime soon either.

But as the BBC's Mark Easton pointed out, "If the consequence of Tuesday's double murder is a display of
militaristic toughness, the troubled inner-city estates may become even
more difficult to police."

It seems that the Department of Homeland Security is preparing for an all-out “American Spring” rebellion and has bought 1.2 billion bullets for counterterrorist snipers.

Probably all those 47% who finally realised they are getting screwed--especially the ones who are dumb enough to be single issue voters for "gun rights".

Anyway, it sounds as if they will be ready for you since according to infowars.com writer and author Paul Joseph Watson they purchased .223 rifle ammunition, plus another 176,000 rounds of .308 caliber 168 grain hollow point boat tail (HPBT) rounds in addition to 25,000 rounds of blank .308 caliber bullets.

“It is the type of ammunition and not necessarily the quantity that is troubling,” James Smith Prepper Podcast was quoted as saying.
“All of the sniper grade ammunition is being used by trained, or in-the-process-of-being-trained snipers,” wrote Smith. Adding up the number of lethal bullets tallies a potential 135,384 kills for the snipers, based on U.S. Army and Marine figures from the Vietnam War, when soldiers used 1.3 rounds of ammunition for each verified kill.

Homeland Security’s purchases of the huge arsenal “is both worrying and ironic given that Americans are being harassed and treated with suspicion for buying a couple of boxes of ammo at their local gun store,” Watson wrote.

It gets even better:

However, the U.S. Army has been preparing for rebellion in the streets, and a Military Police training manual, entitled “Civil Disturbance Operations” describes how to suppress riots and kill civilians when confronting “dissidents." The manual states, “Warning shot will not be fired,” Watson reported.

U.S. Government officials have refused to comment.

Given they have they type of equipment that can hunt you down from miles away, I hope that gives you some serious nightmares.

A Kingsport motorist has been arrested for allegedly brandishing a
handgun during a fit of road rage — marking the third such incident in
as many months on Model City roadways.

Christopher Adam Lipps, 33, of 105 Lone Oak Drive, is charged with
aggravated assault in Tuesday’s incident. A Kingsport Police Department
report says it occurred at approximately 3:20 p.m. on Moreland Drive.Prior to Tuesday, there had been two road rage related arrests in
Kingsport over the past three months, while another occurred just
outside the city limits. Two of those previous three incidents allegedly
included a motorist waving a handgun.

“Unfortunately we have, as do other cities, occasional complaints of
road rage incidents,” said Kingsport Deputy Police Chief David Quillin.
“My best advice is to focus on the rules of road and being a responsible
driver. Ignore other drivers you may have accidentally cut off in
traffic, or for whatever reason may have gotten upset.”

In this one location the authorities have become aware of 4 recent incidents. That means there must have been 40, many of which were done by your "lawful" gun owners.

This is practically an epidemic, when you consider all the other areas and all the other cities in which this kind of behavior is taking place.

The folks who do this are hidden criminals, guys who on paper are law-abiding, have not sustained any felony convictions, etc., but in reality are irresponsible and dangerous.

The solution is obvious. Stricter gun control laws, which would make it more difficult for people to qualify for gun ownership. Many of the bad apples would be weeded out.

The fatal shootings of a man and woman in Simsbury are being treated as a murder-suicide.

Police say they responded to the Meadows apartment complex on Route
10 just before 8:30 p.m. Wednesday after a woman called authorities to
say her boyfriend was pointing a gun at her and threatening to kill her
and himself.

A dispatcher then heard gunshots over the phone.

Officers
found the woman and man dead and a toddler who wasn’t injured.

Every single day we read about people misusing guns who shouldn't have them in the first place. Often it's men abusing women. The pro-gun crowd would love us to accept that there's no way to prevent this from happening, but that's just not the case.

Many of these people have had incidents in their lives which, if strict qualifications for gun ownership had been in effect, would have disqualified them. Gun-rights people don't want that.

My ideas would remove guns from dangerous people at the first indication that they're dangerous, not after they end up killing someone. This maintenance combined with proper gun control laws would lead to a safer society.

Why would anyone oppose that? Everyone would benefit, even the irresponsible ones.

"Yet if you follow what’s been going on with the United Nations this
year, you know that the USA came perilously close to having other
countries dictate our gun laws."

"In other words, the proposed treaty is a mechanism for Iran and other tyrannical powers to have a say in your gun ownership."

"In several drafts, the treaty would have mandated that every round of ammunition be tracked globally."

"Throughout my life, I’ve been committed to preserving our freedom from threats, both foreign and domestic."

"This proposed U.N. global gun control treaty may not be an “invasion” in
the classic sense of the word, but believe me; over time, it represents
the potential for encroachment of the greatest kind. "

It's hard to believe he can say some of that stuff with a straight face, but he does. And conservatives, Republicans, right-wingers, Obama-haters, UN-haters, gun-nuts and several other groups eat it up.

You know what they say about Chuck, he has a grizzly bear carpet in his room. The bear isn't dead it is just afriad to move.

In fact, there were fewer shootings in the city this summer than at any time since 2004.

The number of incidents rose from 135 in June to 189 in July — a
10-year high that included multiple shootings on streets and near
playgrounds. But then, the count dropped to 147 last month.

Similarly, the number of victims increased from 171 in June to 233 in
July, among them 4-year-old Lloyd Morgan, caught in crossfire near a
basketball game, and 14-year-old Kemar Brooks, struck by a bullet as he
walked home from playing tennis.

But in August, the number dived to 182.

While the number of shooting incidents was unchanged for the first
eight months of 2012 as compared with a year ago, the number of victims
decreased from 1,294 to 1,265. And so far this year, the number of
murders is down 16% from last year, from 365 to 306.

Meaning New York — despite too many tragedies that strike at the hearts
of all who live here — is still one of the safest big cities in the
country.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

What happened to him and his reaction, is no surprise to fellow workers at gun stores across Indianapolis.

“Anytime something like this happens in a gun shop community, phone calls go out before the news,” Mike Hilton, of Pop Guns.

Mike
Hilton of Pop Guns and Family Indoor Shooting Range says his employees
are highly trained in firearms tactics and use, and are even more
watchful Monday. A number of years ago, Hilton had guns pulled on him in
his store as well.

Don Davis, the owner of Don's Guns, says his clerk, Ben Chance, was shot twice by a customer, 26-year old Brian Wayner. He says Chance had just given Wayner his bill for using the shooting range inside. Davis says Chance then fired back.. killing Wayner.

“He did exactly what any of us will do, we’ll shoot you back,” said Davis.

Interesting attitude these Indianapolis gun shop owners have isn't it? They sound as if this is not the extremely rare occurrence we often hear it is from the gun-rights folks.

Usually in an attempt to malign gun-free zones, the pro-gun guys will claim that shootings in gun shops and police stations almost never happen. But that doesn't seem to be the case in Indianapolis.

What's your opinion? When someone suddenly decides to shoot up the place, do you think they're concerned with whether it's a gun free zone or not?

Jordan Limas, 18, was arrested for investigation of criminally negligent homicide following the shooting Friday night in Weld County, which he said occurred after a struggle with his younger brother for a handgun.

Limas
told detectives he was able to get the gun away from his younger
brother. As he was backing away from the child, the gun went off and a
bullet hit Andre in the chest.Limas told deputies he stole the gun
about a month before the shooting took place. Weld County investigators
are using the serial number on the weapon to confirm whether the weapon
was stolen.

Limas told deputies he left the weapon loaded on the dining-room table, according to the affidavit.The charges stem from the allegation that Limas left the gun in a place where his younger brother could get his hands on it.

If this guy is being charged with having "left the gun in a place where his younger brother could get his hands on it," why wouldn't the owner of the gun be charged with the same thing?Of course it would have to be determined that the gun was left easily accessible to the thief, but in that case the gun owner should be held accountable.

Many gun owners think it's safe to keep their guns laying around the house or in the car. It's not. As our friend Robert Farago says, a gun should be either on your person or in a safe.

The
pace of homicides this year is ahead of both 2011, when there were 57
homicides all year, and the record-breaking year 2010, when there were
66 homicides.

The city didn't record its 50th homicide last year
until late October. In 2010, it hit 50 homicides in the first half of
October, according to Journal records.

A couple things stand out for me in this sad story which make me question some of the commonly accepted "facts" about gun violence.

If you click on that link to the 51 victims, you'll see that a full 90% died by the gun. Yet, we always hear that about 60% of all murders are committed with a gun. Is it possible that Flint is that far off the national mean? Or is something wrong with that oft-repeated 60% claim?

Secondly, the pro-gun crowd keeps telling us that crime is going down, that gun violence is on the decrease, as if that's reason to abandon all attempts to lower it further. But, Flint, Michigan, like many other cities we read about seems to be getting worse all the time. Violence, especially gun violence increases year after year. How do we reconcile these two ideas?

Kansas City police identified a 40-year-old man who shot a former
girlfriend at Kauffman Stadium on Friday before killing himself as
Marcus L. Collins of Raytown.

Collins drove into the stadium’s Parking Lot A about 3:20 p.m. Friday
and apparently summoned the woman, who was riding a golf cart, to his
car. When she approached on foot, he shot at her several times and she
tried to run, police said. She was struck at least once in the abdomen.

Collins, who never got out of his car, then shot himself.Police
said Collins had known the woman about 20 years and they recently had
begun dating.

Police
said the two apparently had a falling-out and had not been speaking
lately. They did not have any history of domestic violence, and Friday’s
shootings shocked relatives on both sides.

You don't suppose anyone would say that domestic violence must take place in the home, do you? We have some pretty argumentative commenters around here, but I think even they can admit this was a case of domestic violence.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

During an appearance on NRA News, Jim Wallace, the executive director
of Gun Owners' Action League, the state firearms association of
Massachusetts, suggested that strict gun laws did nothing to curb gun
violence in his home state of Massachusetts. Wallace, who is also acandidate in
this year's National Rifle Association Board of Directors elections,
went on to deny that crime guns are trafficked into Massachusetts
from states with weaker laws.According to trace data
from 2011, 669 of the 1,020 firearms for which ATF was able to
determine a source state came from outside of Massachusetts. The top
four trafficking states -- New Hampshire, Maine, Georgia and
Florida -- accounted for 328 weapons. All four of those states also
received extremely low marks in the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun
Violence's annual ranking of state gun laws, each receiving less than 10 points out
of a possible score of 100. In fact, 11 of the top 15 crime gun source
states for Massachusetts received a score of 16 or less on the Brady
Campaign scorecard.

Crossroads of the West bills itself as the biggest traveling gun show in
America, a bastion for constitutional rights where freedom lovers can
exchange weapons, ammunition and ideas. The 35-year-old company promotes
events in four states – Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah – and last
year’s shows drew more than 407,000 customers at up to $16 bucks a pop.
Last weekend, Crossroads occupied the Arizona State Fairgrounds in
Phoenix, and although these expos swing through the area regularly, the
parking lot filled up fast.

What makes gun shows such a tricky market for regulators is that
often there is very little on the surface to distinguish federal
licensed dealers from the private sellers who can sell weapons without a
background check. This “Gun Show Loophole” has been a favorite
legislative target of gun-control advocates for a decade now, and it’s
one of the key provisions in the democratic platform that has so many
gun rights advocates riled up.

Here at Crossroads, private sellers often
have tables stocked with an equally dizzying array of firearms – many
new in the box – and the only difference is that their weapons are
labeled with handwritten garage sale-style price tags, and that instead
of fancy canvas signs they often just post a sheet that reads: PRIVATE
SELLER/NO PAPER. With enough cash and a flash of your Arizona ID, you
can walk away with as many untraceable firearms as you like.

Customers
who put a premium on privacy deliberately seek out these private
sellers, and critics don’t like customers who put a premium on privacy,
namely convicted felons, drug abusers, the mentally ill, or other
“prohibited possessors.” Last year, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an
advocacy group co-chaired by New York’s Michael Bloomberg, released
videos of an undercover sting at a Crossroads show here in Phoenix where
investigators were able to buy on several occasions even after baiting
vendors with statements like “I probably wouldn’t pass a background
check.”

The self-centered nature of the gun-rights folks never ceases to amaze me. It's so obvious that some harm is being done by these private sellers, the only question is how much. And, without interfering with the lives and rights of lawful gun owners the "private sale loophole" could be eliminated. Yet, they won't hear of it.

Why is that? Could these folks really be that self-absorbed and unconcerned about the preventable gun violence that takes place as a result of this easy access to guns?

They say criminals will always get guns. But, they don't KNOW that, it's just a guess. And there's evidence to the contrary. Where there are fewer guns, there are fewer murders, not just murders with guns, but fewer murders, period.

One explanation I can come up with is that the adamant voices which rail against any and all gun control initiatives are just the fringe minority of gun owners at large. There have been surveys that indicate that even gun owners and NRA members agree with the background check problem.

Let me be explicit: an “unrestricted right to gun ownership” is not a
right. In fact, any “unrestricted right” is not a right. For rights to
be genuine, for rights to be effective, for rights to be humane, for
rights to be rights, they must be placed into social and political
contexts — and that means regulation.

This view of rights
emphasizes that they are one of the most important ways that we as a
society have sought to honor and protect human dignity — in fact, the
protection of human dignity is precisely what rights are for. A high
view of dignity will pair rights with responsibilities, individual
freedoms with the obligation to ensure that freedoms of others will be
respected. If we believe that human dignity requires the right to bear
arms, that same foundation of human dignity requires regulations to
ensure that this right is appropriately related to all the other rights
and responsibilities we bear. Our debate should not be whether
regulation, but only which regulation.

Even Justice Scalia, who is no friend to gun control, said in the Heller decision that reasonable restrictions are acceptable. This makes the Second Amendment argument about non-infringement meaningless.

What we're left with is a discussion about how much restriction is acceptable. Even my ideas about proper gun control, which have never come close to being implemented even in the most restrictive places, would allow for the preservation of the spirit of the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The difference would be that gun owners would be more qualified and more responsible.

We've often mentioned that the damage of gun violence is not only counted in deaths. But still we tend to underestimate the extent of the suffering and expense involved in serious injuries.

One way the gun-rights crowd attempts to side step this discussion is to say if we were really concerned about people and their suffering we'd be talking about cars or falls or swimming pools, which account for far more damage than guns. This is an obvious attempt at obfuscation. What we are talking about is gun violence, preventable gun violence for the most part.

Among the 100,000 people who are injured or killed by guns each year there are many thousands who suffer the kinds of injuries they never recover from.

This is the reality. No amount of downplaying or trickery can diminish the seriousness of the toll gun violence takes on our society.

In
California, while "Airsoft" guns are sold with bright orange muzzle
markings, full-body colored paint or clear, BB and pellet guns are
exempt from special paint requirements, because, manufacturers say, they
are not toys and should not be marked as such.Three
retail store owners in the greater Vallejo area contacted for this
article in recent weeks said they no longer carried the
realistic-looking guns. Two others declined requests to be interviewed.In
Vallejo, twice in less than four months, police have fired -- fatally
-- on people allegedly carrying and/or wielding such replica guns.

Cabdrivers Mohammed Elsayed and Blaise Nwokenaka, shot dead by the
last passengers of their lives, were killed with a .380-caliber Cobra
pistol - a gun stolen just 20 days earlier.

Nineteen-year-old Shanetria Grogan was slain by her ex-boyfriend,
shot in the head with a .380-caliber Jimenez Arms semi-automatic pistol,
also stolen. And 23-year-old Leroy Pierson,
killed in a drug deal gone bad, suffered a fatal wound from a
.40-caliber Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol, yet one more
ripped-off weapon.

At least 32,000 guns, some 4,000 every year, have been stolen from
Houston-area homes, cars, pawn shops and even gun dealers since 2005,
with only 7 percent of them ever recovered, a Houston Chronicle analysis shows.

And this is only Houston, and what we know about. Can you imagine the extent of the problem nation-wide?

The solution is obvious. Safe storage laws plus a reporting of stolen guns requirement would take care of the rest.

This wouldn't be a 100% solution, nothing is, but it would go a long way towards improving things.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

9) Gun Control: to have or not to have? Romney has been quite wishy-washy on his views on gun control. In 2004, he passed one of the tightest bans on assault weapons in Massachusetts. But, later on, Romney bought a lifetime
membership to the NRA and hopes to endorse the National Rifle
Association. Though gun control is not one of the main issues for this
campaign, it has been brought to recent light since the Aurora, CO shootings.

I feel sorry for the gun-rights advocates, many of whom are one-issue voters. This guy is their best choice.

A man shot and wounded a female parking lot employee Friday between
the stadiums that are home to the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals before
killing himself, police said.

Graves said the
woman was taken to a hospital in critical condition. Officers found the
man in a car, dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot. Both were in
their 40s and knew each other, but police did not elaborate on their
relationship.

Witnesses
said the man drove into the area in a silver Cadillac, several shots
were fired and the man then turned the gun on himself in the car.

Often in these domestic shootings the guy kills the girl and only wounds himself. I don't know which is worse.

A man who fatally shot his fiance by accident during an argument in
their home last year has been sentenced to nearly 11 years in prison.Ronald Pickett, 27, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the March 5, 2011 shooting of 36-year-old Vanessa McGee and was sentenced Friday to 10 years and 10 months in prison.At some point during the argument, Pickett retrieved a .9mm pistol from their bedroom. As McGee tried to leave the home, she slipped, falling into Pickett, prosecutors said. The gun went off when the two collided and McGee was struck in the top of her shoulder.Charging documents filed in the case indicate that the bullet passed through McGee’s lung and lodged in her abdomen. She died from the wound.

Eleven years for an accident sounds a bit excessive, don't you think? And that was the plea deal.

I couldn't find a picture of this guy but how much you wanna bet he's black? White guys who have accidents don't usually get this kind of treatment, sometimes they get off with a warning to be more careful.

Let's not overlook the fact that he must have been a lawful gun owner. Otherwise, that would have been one of the charges.

Marcus Dixon was once a homeless young teenager who made a "180-degree
turn" when a family in Stamford, Conn., adopted him at age 17, the
Connecticut Post reported. He went on to become the football captain at
Stamford High School -- where he graduated from in 2009 -- before making
it to West Point.

Dixon died shortly after 7 p.m. Thursday when he accidentally shot
himself in the head with his .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol,
according to local reports. Dixon was showing his gun to two friends at
an apartment in Stamford at the time of the incident. He had removed the
magazine from the pistol and, thinking it was empty, tried to show the
gun was safe by pointing it toward his head and pulling the trigger, the
newspaper reported. One round was hidden in the gun's chamber.

I'll never understand how people can "forget the one in the chamber." Wouldn't that be the first thing you think of when pointing a gun at your head and preparing to pull the trigger?